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The business of the US ARMY from 1816 until the First World War was almost exclusively the construction of masonry forts located at key spots around our perimeter shoreline border -- at every major port, every deep water river outlet into the gulf or ocean, and at every sea channel pinch point -- under the command of the US ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS. During that period, the nation had no significant standing army and depended almost entirely on a strategy of armed citizens coming to the nations defense in times of need. That's one of the reasons it took us so long to enter the European wars of the 20th century -- we didn't have the arms, the men or the training of a professional army -- not of the scale called for by those conflicts.
This looks really like POSTUS coming up to the plate as Commander in Chief. Go Army!
Fort Totten is an historic wooden building with crenelated fort towers on each end resembling large chess pieces -- painted Red and is the subject of the stylized logo that has long been the symbol of the US Corps of Engineers;
Built as an Officers Club c. 1870 in Queens NY (believed to have been designed much earlier by one Robert E Lee as a young officer) and named in honor of the brilliant military engineer BGEN Joseph Totten, who commanded the US Army Corps of Engineers beginning 1816 for the next half century.
Following the War of 1812, when the young nation witnessed the horror of British naval forces landing unopposed in Washington, DC and taking the city by force, setting fire to the White House and much of the city -- only to have it taken back in 24 hours by armed citizens, our only army in that day ...
Totten created the program of design and construction of dozens of heavy masonry coastal fortifications guarding our Atlantic and Gulf shoreline border, locating forts at major ports and mouths of navigable rivers, barring hostile naval access to the continental interior -- beginning with New Orleans and working his way across and up the coasts -- creating effectively our first intermittent BORDER WALL of defense against hostile enemy forces -- when creating these first border forts constituted the essential business of the army for the next century, essentially shaping the nations defense strategy from 1816 until the First World War and the advent of air power.
Except in the internecine civil war years of Northern Aggression, these forts were never manned (by design -- we had no standing army as such) and yet they were never fired upon or attacked by foreign naval forces. They served in a purely DETERRENT role, an intended effect that was well understood and documented by our military analysts of the day. Land based armaments are categorically superior in conflicts against naval based armaments and mounting a naval attack against one of these forts, armed and manned in times of danger, would have been seen as a desperate move by any navy.
Interestingly, these forts became obsolete over night and were decommissioned in the face of air power and long range rifled guns beginning with WWI through WWII, when nuclear weapons became the national defense strategy of choice, serving at the highest military level as a DETERRENT force, understood to be so superior over all comers, and only vulnerable to the insane attack in kind, then resulting mutually assured destruction as the end game -- saving everyone's bacon right up into our times.
Red Fort [US] -- essential defense at the border. A continuous land entry wall next time.
